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Thorpe: the cover up

Secret files locked in a Yard safe, the buying of a hitman’s silence: great pains were taken to hide the truth about the Liberal leader and a plot to kill his former gay lover, reveals Tom Mangold

Tom Mangold

December 7 2014, 12:01am, The Sunday Times

Jeremy Thorpe leaves the Old Bailey after his acquittal in 1979 (Jane Brown)

The glowing obituaries for Jeremy Thorpe, the former Liberal party leader, who died on Thursday aged 85, failed to reveal the truth behind his sensational Old Bailey trial in 1979.

At the time, I interviewed key figures — including a hired assassin — for a television programme on the background to the case, which would have been broadcast if he had been found guilty of the charges of conspiracy and incitement to murder his former male lover. When the not guilty verdicts came in, I was ordered to destroy the tapes.

The story also encompassed two powerful policemen whose accounts have never been revealed before — and members of the British Establishment who protected Thorpe to the bitter end.